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The Man Who Would Be King
The most colorful politician ever to come out of Louisiana was
both a populist and a thug.
Reviewed by Michael Kazin
Sunday, June 11, 2006
KINGFISH
The Reign of Huey P. Long
By Richard D. White Jr.
Random House. 361 pp. $26.95
Huey Long was the most entertaining tyrant in American history.
From 1928, when he became governor of Louisiana, to 1935,
when he was assassinated, Long's flamboyant style and brazen
deeds provided journalists and their readers with more good
stories than most politicians pile up in a lifetime.
The Kingfish (a nickname he borrowed from a character on the
"Amos 'n' Andy" radio show) cursed and bullied state lawmakers
until they voted his way or were hounded out of office, sometimes
in rigged elections. Vowing to help farmers and laborers of all
races, Long forced the legislature to finance free textbooks for
schoolchildren, build thousands of miles of new roads and slap a
hefty tax on Standard Oil, whose Baton Rouge refinery was the
largest in the world.
Meanwhile, Long, who sometimes wore green silk pajamas while
greeting official visitors, treated himself to the bounty of his
realm. He ordered convicts from the state penitentiary to tear
down the antebellum governor's mansion and had a near-replica
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of the White House built in its place. He acted as virtual coach of

the Louisiana State University football team and sometimes threw
tantrums on the field when they lost. And he often gave his best
speeches while drunk.
In 1930, Long won a seat in the U.S. Senate. Back in Baton Rouge,
he installed as governor a smiling toady, felicitously named O.K.
Allen. In Washington, Long demanded that Congress confiscate all
earnings over $1 million a year and use the funds for medical
care, college tuitions and other programs. When his fellow
senators refused to endorse his "Share Our Wealth" plan, he
called them "damned scoundrels" fit for hanging.
To serve his ends, Long could switch from color-blind altruism to
smarmy bigotry. In 1935, the Kingfish unleashed a racist smear
against a local judge in Louisiana, accusing him of having "coffee"
or mulatto blood. In response, the judge's son-in-law, a young
doctor, shot Long down in the halls of the state capitol. At his
death, the Kingfish was only 42 years old. He had been planning
to run for president as a populist, third-party candidate; if he'd
lived, he might have been able to keep Franklin D. Roosevelt from
winning reelection in 1936.
These and scores of other similarly engaging tales fill Richard D.
White Jr.'s precise and effervescent new biography of Long. White,
who teaches at LSU, adopts a tone of zestful disapproval toward
his crude, headline-grabbing subject. He understands that millions
of ordinary people in the state loved Long for humbling the old
elite and making himself a national celebrity in the process.
"During his first couple of years as governor," White allows, "Huey
Long made significant improvements to the lives of many
Louisianans." But the net effect of White's "have you heard this
one" approach is to make Long seem more a buffoon than a
reformer or a dictator. Voters, the author implies, should have
banished this egomaniacal man-child from public life long before
his blood spattered the marble corridors of the state capitol
building.
Although his book is a pleasure to read, White has the misfortune
of having to meet a higher standard than does the typical
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biographer of a state politician who died fairly young and never

got to campaign for national office. More than three decades ago,
T. Harry Williams, another LSU professor, published a vivid,
Pulitzer Prize-winning study of Long's life that included most of
the same stories that White tells, usually at greater length and
with the help of interviews with many of Long's cronies and
enemies. Williams also took the time to explain how the corrupt
political culture of Louisiana could produce a man like Long and
could persuade ordinary people to overlook his thuggish flaws. If
that opus wasn't competition enough, White also has to contend
with the dazzling portrait--clef that Robert Penn Warren drew of
Long, or "Willie Stark," in his novel All the King's Men . (Broderick
Crawford gave a brilliant rendition of that character in the 1949
film; a remake starring Sean Penn is set to come out this fall.)
Unfortunately, White adds nothing significant to these memorable
works. Nor does he make much of an effort to explain why Long,
toward the end of his life, was able to build a national following
with broadcast speeches and a mushrooming network of Share
Our Wealth Clubs that boasted a membership of millions.
The answer is as contradictory as the man. Long flouted the law,
drank excessively and bragged that he violently intimidated his
rivals. But in the pit of the Great Depression, he also tapped into a
deep vein of anger against the rich and a longing for political
redemption. Even after his death, the magic of the Long name
enabled Huey's brother, son and other family members to get
elected time and again to state and federal offices. For Louisiana
voters, memories of Long as the champion of ordinary folks beset
by adversity trumped the image of him as a tyrant, making him
what one fellow senator called "the smartest lunatic I ever saw in
my whole life." Perhaps it's not surprising that, in the wake of the
Hurricane Katrina debacle, certain nostalgia for the Kingfish has
been stirring in the state he once ruled.

Michael Kazin is the author, most recently, of "A Godly Hero: The Life of
William Jennings Bryan." He teaches history at Georgetown University.
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